Leaving the labels?

Across the Atlantic from where I'm sitting in St Davids, designer and catalyst Bruce Mau is asking the question "how do we put university quality education into the hands of the 99% of 18 year olds who don't get to go, but need the insight it can deliver?"

Seth Godin also asks "What would happen if people spent it building up a work history instead [of focusing on a getting a over-hyped university degree]? On becoming smarter, more flexible, more self-sufficient and yes, able to take more risk because they owe less money...

There's no doubt that we need smarter and more motivated people in our organizations. I'm not sure we need them to be better labeled or more accredited.

In the UK, the Seven Fools are asking employers for their wish list of the characteristics that they'd want new employees to have if their businesses were serious about innovation and sustainability. So far, no-one has said "they need more knowledge". Capability, results, evidence and portfolios are what's needed, so let's focus on creating an education system that can deliver both.

Student sustainability trends

The Higher Education Academy have recently commissioned a student survey on "First year attitudes towards, and skills in, sustainable development". The results are no surprise, yet do not echo what employers are really doing to use the potential interest of younger people entering work.

• over 80% of respondents believe sustainability skills are important to their future employers;
• employers anticipate a need to employ staff with these skills;
• 63% of respondents are prepared to sacrifice £1,000 salary to work for a sustainably-aware company;
• awareness of sustainable development schemes is up to five times more likely in first-year students who have come from a sixth-form attached to a state school than those who have come from a standalone sixth form college or private school;
• sustainability concerns are significant in students’ university choices;
• ESD is considered by many practitioners to be a nebulous concept with a need for a nationally accepted working definition;
• the research indicates that skills in sustainable development are slightly more relevant to students from Scotland, where there is a history of national policy in ESD;
• 65% of respondents believe that sustainability skills should be delivered throughout the curriculum rather than through a separate module;
• ESD content is avoided when teaching staff feel they do not know enough about the issues;
• there can be limited institutional drive to encourage the embedding of ESD into the curriculum which is often seen as already overcrowded.

Resilience & Abundance

Josephine Green is a leading thinker on design, resilience and biomimicry, with many year's experience at Phillips Design. She's talking at the University of Glamorgan in a couple of weeks:

As part of the Glamorgan Business School’s public lecture series ‘Leading Thoughts by Leading Minds’ 2010/11, which follows the theme -  innovation in business, Visiting Professor Josephine Green, presents a lecture entitled “Doing More with More, from Scarcity to Abundance”.

bus.glam.ac.uk/lectures

Changing the Education Paradigm

Sir Ken Robinson is one of my heroes. He has a remarkable ability to distill complex issues into simple, understandable words and phrases that make enormous sense in a world gone mad.

In this RSA Animate lecture, he talks of the need to shift our focus towards divergent thinking and the need to revitalise the aesthetic in education, replacing the increasingly ritalin-induced anaesthesia of our current system, delivered by an ethic and culture that's remained unchallenged and unchanged for too long.

Add the insights of biomimicry and the art of improv to Sir Ken's ideas, with a focus on delivering 'R10' quality solutions that are fit for a more intelligent future, and we might just there.

Enjoy it here.

Understanding Education

Thanks to Seth Godin for this neat quote from Arlo Guthrie, activist, singer, cause champion.

"You teach kids how to succeed when they successfully foil the educational system."

As the education systems seems to be teaching few of the real skills and knowledge to kick our way of thinking and doing back on track, maybe it's time for change. Let's meet in Alice's Restaurant to discuss it.